There was an Englishman who had an only son; and only sons
are often petted, and humored and ruined. This boy became very headstrong, and
very often he and his father had trouble. One day they had a quarrel, and the
father was very angry, and so was the son; and the father said he wished the boy
would leave home and never come back. The boy said he would go, and would not
come into his fathers house again till he sent for him. The father said he would
never send for him. Well, away went the boy. But when a father gives up a boy, a
mother does not. You mothers will understand that, but the fathers may not. You
know there is no love on earth so strong as a mother's love. A great many things
may separate a man and his wife; a great many things may separate a father from
his son, but there is nothing in the wide world that can ever separate a true
mother from her child. To be sure, there are some mothers that have drank so
much liquor that they have drunk up all their affection. But I am talking about
a true mother; and she would never cast off her boy.

Well, the mother began to write, and plead with the boy to
write to his father first, and he would forgive him; but the boy said, "I
will never go home till father asks me." Then she plead with the father,
but the father said, "No, I will never ask him." At last the mother
came down to her sick-bed, broken-hearted, and when she was given up by the
physicians to die, the husband, anxious to gratify her last wish, wanted to know
if there was nothing he could do for her before she died. The mother gave him a
look; he well knew what it meant. Then she said, "Yes, there is one thing
you can do. You can send for my boy. That is the only wish on earth you can
gratify. If you do not pity him and love him when I am dead and gone, who
will?" "Well," said the father, "I will send word to him
that you want to see him." "No," she says, "you know he will
not come for me. If ever I see him you must send for him."

At last the father went to his office and wrote a dispatch
in his own name, asking the boy to come home. As soon as he got the invitation
from his father, he started off to see his dying mother. When he opened the door
to get in, he found his mother dying and his father by the bedside. The father
heard the door open, and saw the boy, but instead of going to meet him, he went
to another part of the room, and refused to speak to him. His mother seized his
hand; how she had longed to press it! She kissed him, and then said, "Now,
my son, just speak to your father. You speak first, and it will all be
over." But the boy said, "No, mother; I will not speak to him until he
speaks to me." She took her husband's hand in one hand and the boy's in the
other, and spent her dying moments in trying to bring about a reconciliation.
Then just as she was expiring, she could not speak, so she put the hand of the
wayward boy into the hand of the father, and passed away. The boy looked at the
mother, and the father at the wife, and at last the father's heart broke, and he
opened his arms, and took that boy to his bosom, and by that body they were
reconciled. Sinner, that is only a faint type, a poor illustration, because God
is not angry with you.

I bring you to-night to the dead body of Christ. I ask you
to look at the wounds in his hands and feet, and the wound in his side. And I
ask you, "Will you not be reconciled?"